One of the key advantages of moving to Cloud is, of course, no longer having to worry about engaging into upgrade exercises, big or small. But for those still in that mode today, please be aware that Notes, Domino or Sametime releases 8.0 are coming to end of life in April.

If you are running these releases, you may want to bridge over quickly to a supported release OR to your new platform (like Cloud). To save cycles and do it safely, we have an offer called AVP Upgrade Bridge that can be added to your maintenance contract to stay supported. Through the assistance of an Accelerated Value Leader, you will get priority service to expedite the resolution of issues, keep your production humming while you focus on your destination.

Between now and the end of March, IBM will also include, free of charge, a Multi-Media Library/User Adoption tool kit, complete with training videos, presentations, tutorials and more! This toolkit will significantly reduce training expenses and help your users adopt more quickly.

Want to hear more about the Upgrade Bridge offer? Visit the Expertise Zone while at ConnectED or contact janet1@us.ibm.com

In this Open Mic 6 minutes replay, AVL Jim Dewan describes how to incorporate Connections into your software solution monitoring/troubleshooting and performance analysis into a dynamic dashboard to oversee your Connections environment. In this short video, he presents how to collect client response time data throughout the environment and share it within the friendly confines of a Connections Community. Leveraging the Connections mobile client for this data provides access from any place, any time, and anywhere. The key to adoption rates of Connections is to deliver necessary data within various teams. Real time system status and response times metrics, information that is constantly changing, is a great way to increase usage of a Connections Community. Teams then document their knowledge around these real time stats leveraging the powerful features of Connections.

Available also for other ICS products, Watchit is a no cost monitoring and performance reporting tool available via IBM Greenhouse. It is a platform independent tool with some great Connections monitors and stress testing. There are minimal software requirements such as Python and a JRE. For Connections, it leverages the REST apis to create content for performance/functional analysis and to then push the results into a Connections Community if desired.

The C2040-TBD: IBM Connections Cloud Fundamentals V1 is currently in the works and will also be a brand new addition to the portfolio. This exam is an entry-level exam covering the features and functions of the IBM Connections Cloud family of products and subscriptions. This overview exam covers all the Connections Cloud subscriptions, including IBM Verse. Candidates successfully completing this exam will receive the IBM Certified Associate - Connections Cloud V1 certification. This exam and certification pair is expected to be released around the first of April 2015.

IBM Customers can get started on their own Expertise journey. The IBM Software Services team has made the Expertise Analytics, Expertise Locator, and other applications available for customer deployments on-premises and in the cloud. More details available in the IBM Software Services Collaboration community (https://ibm.biz/issc_community) and the Expertise Locator wiki page (https://ibm.biz/BdEb9m). My thoughts on the difference between search and expertise location in this blog entry (https://ibm.biz/BdF4LS)
Keep watching for the new releases of Touchpoint, Expertise Locator and Social Q&A.
Contact me or your local ISSC representative for more details.

Have you heard about IBM Event Connect? It's an event management software, allowing participants to connect through a social network, ahead, during and after an event. The social approach is great to extend the event beyond these few days that are so expensive for everyone - the planners as well as the participants.

Available prior to the event, participants can meet other attendees and presentors to plan their event. It is a clear advantage to be able to find new contacts in a network of people with similar interests and whom you may decide to plan to meet. The conversation can mature sooner than if it just starts at the event. This is similar to the experience you get when you take a course remotely and then meet the other course participants in person: you don't start from scratch and you are already clear on who you want to prioritize to meet.

More ecologic, an event management tool saves a ton of weight on the participants shoulders and a ton of work to the event planners with the simplified logistics. The analytics also allow the planners to adjust the delivery in real time, like to add more high demand sessions and be able to communicate it to the participants. It also provides them insight for the planning of their future events.

With the large scales of today's conferences, you want to make sure you don't miss anything or anyone when you invest to go there. Conferences are for accelerated networking because so much is already available locally and virtually. If I go out of my way to participate to a professional event, I want it to be worthwhile. A tool like IBM Event Connect provides accelerates the quality of the networking, leading to higher quality discussions sooner and a more satisfying event experience. This is good for both the participant and the planners!

Find out more about IBM Event Connect by visiting regularly its home page which I also bookmarked in this community.

Event Marketing company Omnience Casey Cote talks about the benefits of using IBM Event Connect as an event app. He explains that the social space distinguishes this solution from event apps. It observed that it achieves a higher level of engagement among event planners, participants and speakers through out the conference. Omnience has noticed a higher satisfaction rate among participants since using IBM Event Connect.

IBM Customers can get started on their own Expertise journey. The IBM Software Services team has made the Expertise Analytics, Expertise Locator, and other applications available for customer deployments on-premises and in the cloud...

Those of you interested by detailed technical news for the maintenance and support of your IBM Collaboration products, you may be interested to visit and become a member of our sister blog site, the IBM Collaboration Solutions Support blog, which I added to our important bookmarks for your future reference.

- A reminder about End Of Service reached on April 30 for the following products: Notes-Domino 8.0x, Sametime 8.0x, Sametime Entry 8.5x, to name a few. It is possible to purchase a service extension for some products through your services contact.

Did you know that IBM has created an exclusive member services site just for IBM Certification Professionals?

The IBM Certification Member Site is full of great resources to help you share your certification experience with the world. For example, members can create a unique profile page that will share your certifications and allow you to describe your accomplishments. Then you are able to share this unique profile with anyone you choose using a friendly URL. Members may also order premium or wallet-sized certificates and update their demographic information at the site.

In an interview delivered to IBM Thoughts on Cloud at the recent IBM Innovation event, renowned public speakerGuy Kawasaki shared how Cloud has been an enabler for innovation. A summary of the interview along with the recording can be accessed by cliking on the image below.

During the interview, Kawasaki noted that Cloud computing made innovation and entrepreneurship more affordable for the past decade. Cloud lifted important set up cost barriers, opening markets to more suppliers of all means and consequently, more choices for the consumer. His suggestion is compete on a strategy of a differentiated valuable product.

Creating value in today's competitive market happens through a series of success or lessons by the customer side. In that context, he shared that entrepreneurs never loose: they either succeed or they learn. This iterative process leads to steady and meaningful progress.

Reflecting on his career, he sees two key roles in a business: making a product or selling it. This observation is very much in line with American management consultant Peter Drucker, who stated that "because its purpose is to make a customer, the business has two - and only two - functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation create value, all the rests are costs."

As an enabler to make innovation accessible to all, Cloud helps reduce the costs component of the equation so businesses can focus on creating value.

Diane Morneau, M.Sc.

Manager of Communications, Offerings and Knowledge Development

Based in Canada, Diane has been working in the Collaboration Services division for eighteen years. Her team supports the Social Business Support and Services team for their Communications, Marketing, Service Offerings, Knowledge Management and Education needs. Her favorite blogging topics are subjects related to creativity and innovation.

As a certification program manager, I bring together regularly Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from all sources to prepare certification exams. One of the first steps in creating a new exam is determining what will be on it. To do this, I ask my SMEs, "What does a person need to know how to do in order to do XYZ job role?". Before IBM Connections Docs came along, it was a painful process for me, as all my SMEs began shouting out tasks at once and I had to try to capture them in a document while doing a screen-share.

Now, Docs has simplified greatly this process for me and my team of SMEs. During our brainstorming session, I can simply turn the SMEs loose on a Docs Document and let them type out their ideas in their own words. All of the technical jargon is now spelled correctly! They are able to add onto each other's thoughts in real time. I can edit their tasks in the background as they brainstorm so that they are formatted correctly so that no further editing is needed later. All of us in the Document can see who has contributed what as each contributor's text is indicated with a different color. As we are reviewing tasks, we don't have to wonder who contributed XYZ task because the text clearly indicates who did.

Using Docs, our brainstorming now only takes one session rather than several because difficulties with data capture and frequent editing have been virtually eliminated. The SMEs find Docs to be a very effective tool to collaborate on their exam ideas and are always pleased with the results. I've used Docs for other purposes, but this, by far, is my favorite and most useful way to use Docs.

Based in Austin, Texas, Rena has worked at IBM in a variety of roles for the past 17 years. In that time, she has worked in IBM Notes and Domino Support, the Accelerated Value Program, and now, ICS Education with Certification. She has always stressed knowledge as a way to plan and solve problems.

Our YouTube channel, ICSSupportVideos, delivers short 5-6 minutes videos on a variety of topics related to our products - best practices, configuration tips, demonstrations and so on. Subscribe and be one of the first advised of new postings!

Here are a few recent submissions:

Connections Touchpoint demo

In this demonstration, Scott Rogers, Collaboration Consultant, shows how a new user can be routed through the Touchpoint application to build their profile and social network.

5m04s

A brief overview of the Websphere SSL Configuration area as used by the Sametime product family

An overview by Tony Payne, as part of a Sametime Open Mic session titled "SSL and Sametime: POODLE Training 101" delivered in March.

We have an incredible agenda lined up. Jeff Schick, Vice President of IBM Enterprise Social Solutions, will discuss how collaboration in the cloud can help companies realize cost savings and operational efficiencies, plus how IBM and our partners can help companies achieve this success. Several clients will also speak about their move to IBM Connections on Cloud.

In addition, we will demo the power of IBM Verse -- cloud delivered email that works for you. IBM Verse uses Design Thinking and analytics to bring together email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social updates, and more - all in a single, intuitive, collaborative environment. This is mail reimagined for a new way to work, with a seamless array of social and mobile capabilities.

Things are progressing rapidly in the world of IBM Verse, our new intelligent mail assistant, with a neat "Getting Started" wizzard just released and the Android version of Verse Mobile expected this week (the iOS one is already out).

Personally, I am very impressed by the genius behind the important contacts toolbar, highlighted in red in the enclosed picture of the desktop version. I consider it the "dashboard to my mail file". It presents the counts of unread emails, of what I owe others, of what they owe me, along my important contacts. On Mobile, important contacts appear in a full screen, from which you can see a person's mail by selecting their picture.

What is so great about it?

It helps me be more dynamic! Verse scans my inbox and identifies important correspondants based on the moment. I can make a suggestion of important contact stick through a simple drag and drop or work with the dynamic choices identified by Verse's smarts. Prior to using Verse, I did not adjust to my actual workload my list of important contacts. Verse does it for me now. Verse's recommendations on my cyclic important friends is priceless: they help me adapt to the changing demand.

One clic replaces scrolling. Verse saves me from scrolling to attend my mail. While color coding previously helped me spot important mail, now, I am informed of important arrivals without any browsing thanks to visual cues on this dashboard and a single clic. Nothing falls off to screen.

You've got mail! No, Better: You've got important mail! Verse advises me of any new mail from an important person by a red dot. I can't miss it. Dynamic. Visible. Timely. Effective. If I click on the circled icon representing this person, it shows me the mail related to this person. I am no longer in chasing mode through a list of emails: what is important comes to me in a click.

Act on me! Just as brilliant, are the counts of unread mail and follow up emails, now split in two categories: what I owe others and what they owe me. I always found that I did not attend as regularly as I would like to, my follow up folder. Here, the numbers are nagging me for action!

Without a doubt, the important contacts toolbar is key to my new way to work, a huge time saver and organizer.

Based in Canada, Diane has been working in IBM's Collaboration Services division for eighteen years. Her team supports the Social Business Support and Services teams for their Communications, Marketing, Service Offerings, Knowledge Management and Education needs. Her favorite blogging topics are subjects related to creativity and innovation.

The dreaded call spike from a new version of software is the nightmare all Service Desk professionals have experienced. Service Level metrics, staffing and productivity all suffer when we deploy new versions of software, especially when the User interface has changed. Remember "Where is the Print Button?" from the new Office 2007 ribbon? That simple interface change stimulated a 47% rise in Service Desk calls for a 90 day rolling period in countless organizations. Answering 'spike' questions disrupts service levels, creates staffing challenges, and causes delays in agents resolving more complex diagnostic issues. By using pre-emptive intervention and a continuous 'User Adoption Campaign', Service Desks are able to smooth the implementation change for End Users and minimize the Service Desk metric levels.

Continuous Campaigns is a way to think about the solution from an End Users' perspective. Like an advertising agency, we need to 'touch' the 'consumer' 13 times to change behavior. If we are going to do that, we need tools and programs that intersect with the End User (aka Spike Caller!) at every point in the users' learning progression in the their new application environment. The chart below illustrates some of the resources that can be deployed in concert to minimize disruption and enhance productivity.

User Adoption Tools (UAT) are the key to running Continuous Campaigns that will keep spike calls to a minimum. UAT materials can be as simple as what the Service Desk has always known as a 'Cheat Sheet'. These 2 page basic How-To guides are essential for Agents, so why not for 'Consumers' (aka End Users)? How about a short commercial that gives a preview of the new software? A Tip of the Week email as the product is launched? Or Lunch and Learn Topic slide presentations? Deploying a range of resources that can get in front of questions as they occur or stimulate questions when we are ready to take them is a good thing for both the User and the Service Desk. New user interfaces and changes to software design are as frustrating to End Users productivity as it is the Service Desk efficiency!

Our job is to get IT Users back to work! … and get them up to speed on new software quickly. Think about how you can contribute to Continuous Campaigns and how you might build User Adoption Tools that pre-empt the spike that will occur AGAIN with Windows 10 and Office 2016.

Keith Gibson, CEO

Keith is a 15 year veteran of the Service Desk industry where he has focused on the role of Knowledge in the support equation. His experience includes very large as well as startup service desks. He has worked for IBM, KPMG, Sykes Enterprises before founding his own business over 15 years ago. Knowledge Accelerators was founded with the belief that once table driven applications accelerated application deployment, the speed an organization can adapt to changes is then constrained by the speed knowledge can be assimilated by the end 'consumers' of the knowledge.

What it Takes to Survive and Thrive in Epic Times Thursday, June 04, 2015 12 - 1245 EDT

The world is changing. At the current rate and pace, you might even say these are epic times! Market factors and technological shifts are affecting every industry. Professions aren't what they were even five years ago.

As a business leader, you can take advantage of this combination of events and also use them as catalysts for growth. When done and done well, you'll find this can make the difference between merely surviving and thriving.

IBM Verse takes a vastly different approach to enterprise email by integrating the many ways employees connect each day - via email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social updates, video chats and more - all through a single collaboration environment. It is the first messaging system to feature 'faceted search,' which enables users to pinpoint and retrieve specific information they're seeking across all the various types of content within their email.

IBM Verse uses built-in analytics to provide an 'at-a-glance' view that intelligently surfaces an individual's most critical actions for the day. By learning unique employee preferences and priorities over time, it provides instant context about a given project as well as the people and teams collaborating on it. Clients using IBM Verse will also have the option to embed a Watson feature into their collaboration environment, which enables users to query Watson on a given topic and receive a direct reply with answers ranked by degree of confidence.

"The convergence of analytics, cloud, social and mobile technologies is not just impacting our personal lives, it's profoundly changing how we work," said Bob Picciano, Senior Vice President, IBM Information and Analytics Group. "These forces are reshaping how people make decisions, create and share new ideas and collaborate across teams to get work done. With IBM Verse, we challenged our design teams to use analytics to completely reimagine the social collaboration experience to focus on engaging people and driving outcomes, not managing messages and inboxes."

"The overall design and visual interface immediately caught my attention, there is a simplicity and purpose in how information is presented that makes the entire experience very intuitive. I quickly realized just how much was happening beneath the surface. It gives you a seamless blend of email, social and collaboration capabilities that didn't force me to jump between my inbox, calendar and other apps to share and connect with people. It's hard to even call this email anymore, that's just one facet to what they are delivering with IBM Verse."

IBM Collaboration Solutions Certified Professionals can benefit from engaging not just with others in the ICS Certification program, but with the overarching IBM Certification Program. Cross-brand promotions, networking opportunities, and information specific to certified individuals, regardless of product specialization, are just a click away.

So connect to this exceptional, brand-agnostic program for IBM Certified Professionals through social media via Facebook and/or Twitter.

IBM Professional Certification knows that having an online presence and engaging in Social Business is no longer an option, it is a necessity. These accounts provide an opportunity for individuals certified on Collaboration Solutions products to connect with peers and certified professionals in other brands. Key members of the IBM Certification team, industry leaders, and those looking to become certified are also active in these spaces. These forums provide excellent opportunities for professionals to stay in touch and up-to-date with industry trends, news, and happenings.

Based in Austin, Texas, Rena has worked at IBM in a variety of roles for the past 17 years. In that time, she has worked in IBM Notes and Domino Support, the Accelerated Value Program, and now, ICS Education with Certification. She has always stressed knowledge as a way to plan and solve problems.

With the overall theme of sharing experiences on how to develop a breakthrough idea to take it to fruitition, we warmed up on a few questions regarding developping our personal brand in social medias. We shared thoughts on the importance to establish a niche for oneself. Among the great input being tabled, Dorie Clark shared that it is important in order to establish credibility and that once this is done, you can strategically expand into adjacent areas.

We then discussed the importance for companies to foster a climate for collective innovation rather than expect that all breakthrough ideas should come from the top. Widely accepted concept, some good insight was shared including my favorite, one of Tamara McCleary's contribution stating that "sometimes the people who have the best ideas are the ones who don't think they have the answers". This is so true. Without teaming, some ideas go to waste. Ideas find their place easier and are built on through the diversity and the power of teams. Later in the call, she also shared tips on how to involve people who think they are not creative so they become full contributors.

We discussed many of the conditions required to take great ideas to term in a corporate setting, like the importance of getting honest peer feedback to do the initial idea strenghtening, the importance of networks and sponsorship to expand and so on. We also touched on the topic of protectionism when Mark Babbitt rightfully pointed out that "Protectionism is an Industrial age obstacle, a barrier to success. In the Social Age, we don't own ideas... we create conversations around them". Very well said, I thought.

Through-out the chat, the featured authors and the participants generously shared their experience and observations on the questions asked. We concluded with a discussion around how to combine ideas across fields to support passions. This ability to transpose a working model to a new field to reuse expertise and inspire creativity is a key differentiator of innovators.

If you would like to read the full transcript of this very interesting crowd chat, just click on the picture above.

Diane Morneau, M.Sc.

Manager of Communications, Offerings and Knowledge Development

Based in Canada, Diane has been working in IBM's Collaboration Services division for eighteen years. Her team supports the Social Business Support and Services teams for their Communications, Marketing, Service Offerings, Knowledge Management and Education needs. Her favorite blogging topics are subjects related to creativity and innovation.